Israel Matzav

Raining in Sderot

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) posts an exclusive report from Sderot written by Michael Yon.

When Allison and I walked into the house, glass crunching under foot, I was astonished at the level of destruction caused by these so-called ‘nuisance’ attacks. The destruction to this woman’s home seemed to be about what a Hellfire missile would have delivered. The roof was destroyed and the ceiling caved in. Luckily, she had not been home during the strike or likely she would have been killed. Still, imagine a 70 year-old woman returning to find her home destroyed. Many of her belongings still were in the house. And so now the home of this woman was destroyed, but I was assured that the Israelis had taken her immediately into care at a nursing home in Netanya, deeper into the country, out of range, until her home could be repaired.

Another home, a couple blocks down the road, showed a similar level of destruction, the inhabitants gone, workers inside.

The victims of these attacks gave us free access to their houses and I felt welcome and at home in Sderot. It looks like a very safe place to be - except for the constant rocket strikes.

...

The idea of a two-state solution, once popular with many Israelis, is evaporating. More and more Israelis are coming to believe that any appeasement with the Palestinians is merely a reward for terrorism. And so it is. The Palestinians have become prisoners by their own hand. The hand that builds the bombs, wields the guns, and welds the rockets, has caused a fence to be built around them.

They are isolated and imprisoned. But it’s not only Israel who’s done this. The Gaza Strip borders Egypt, and Egypt has done the same. The terrorists are tunneling like rats and the Egyptians and Israelis are trying to locate and destroy the tunnels under their respective fence lines. Who wants the Palestinians? If the Palestinians truly were a peaceful lot, victims only of Israel, one might think that they would have free entry into Egypt. But they do not.

Meanwhile Operation Cast Lead is threatening to unravel international relations.

The previously cozy relations between Turkey and Israel has gone frigid. A British official told me that the British are investigating war crimes charges against Israel, while Israelis tell me that if the British charge Israelis with war crimes, they will charge British officers with war crimes for their actions in Basra, Iraq. A Spanish judge is also talking war crimes. The situation only gets worse from there. Just as we have seen U.S. relations crash after our responses to the 9/11 attacks, important relations between responsible nations are fraying due to responses to terrorist attacks.

Many of us remember those long security lines in the airports, and the billions we must invest in security that could go elsewhere, and all because of a relatively tiny number of people. Many of us remember the people raining from the buildings, choosing the falling death to the burning death, and reports of certain Palestinians celebrating those deaths. How much veracity and weight to assign reports of Palestinians celebrating is unknown to me, but there seems to have been at least some basis in truth.

And today, where is the equity? Why haven’t Hamas leadership been charged with war crimes for indiscriminate attacks on Sderot and other towns? They, along with other terrorist organizations, launched about 7,000 missiles since 2005, and about 10,000 since 2001. It would be impossible to know exactly how much explosives were contained in those rockets because the Kassams include a great mix of types and sizes. Yet to make a ballpark guess, there might be an average of 20lbs of explosives per rocket since 2005. Since 2005, that would be about 140,000lbs of explosives, not to mention the metal mass of the powerful rocket tubes. Imagine about 140,000lbs of explosives raining down at random times, but particularly when the kids are going to school.

Read the whole thing.

By the way, I wish it were really raining in Sderot rather than rockets coming down. We have a drought here. It was in the 70's today and they're saying this is the driest winter on record. And it's the fifth below-average year in a row.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:41 PM